I'm on the journey to figure it out

meditation

The thing with Anxiety is, it’s always there, it’s never going away, the techniques I learned at my CBT therapy are great and do work, but you do have to work at it. I got a bit lazy. I finished the therapy in March, carried on doing the minimum (meditation etc) then there was a birthday and then we were off on holiday, great right? Apparently not for Barry. Barry decided that now would be a great time to start feeling insecure, so instead of lying by the pool sipping cocktails and thinking what a great time I was having, I was comparing myself to all the other female sunbathers, thinking that my boyfriend probably wished I looked like them, why don’t I take care of myself more? I feel disgusted with myself – all this whilst sipping several pina coladas I might add. I hated myself, but I didn’t want to do anything about it. All these negative thoughts I was having about myself was literally draining me, looking back now, I was slowly slipping into a hole. I tried to put a brave face on to my boyfriend but inside I was feeling quite sad, I put it down to hormones and got on with the holiday.

About 6 weeks later, I received a letter from my ex husbands solicitor officially starting the divorce proceedings, prior to this we had tried to resolve this between us, but it was clear that wasn’t going to happen, we did not part on good terms. He was making ridiculous demands and I had 14 days to respond from the date, so now I had 10. Enter Barry. I got completely stressed out, he was asking for money I didn’t have, I didn’t know where to start or what to do, my boyfriend tried to calm me down but I was too far gone in the state of what I call “Punch or Cry” I’m either going to punch something in a rage or burst into tears. My poor boyfriend, who although amazing and very understanding, does not deal very well with anger or tears and didn’t know what to say or do, sorry I should re-phrase that, he didn’t know the right thing to say or do, everything was just making it worse. So I followed my instincts and called the only person I knew who would calm me down. My Dad.

After being consoled and advised, pretty much the same advise the boyfriend gave me but worded differently but still. I went into work the next day, spoke to my boss, who was brilliant and very supportive, telling me to take whatever time I needed for solicitors etc. I booked an appointment to see a solicitor the following morning. I was so anxious that night I barely slept. Barry had become a full-time companion by this point, so any time it look like I might fall asleep he would whisper “what if you have to pay him thousands of pounds” even tho I don’t have a penny to my name and up to my eyeballs in debt it still worried me. It was going to be a loooooong night.